Tag Archives: Tea Party

The conservative bastion Washington Post reports the demise of Saturday postal deliveries, related to the looming bankruptcy of the USPS. The Post article blames it on the internet. Ha ha. (Over the Line, Smokey! doesn’t link to that rag.)

The USPS is going bankrupt because in 2006 the Republicans in Congress snuck through a bill forcing the USPS to fully fund future pensions, a requirement not faced by other branches of government or the private sector. The object was and is to bankrupt the Postal Service and put them out of business. Rich people, unlike the great majority of citizens, don’t need or want the Postal Service or its home delivery or the many services offered at the post office. And, privatization of delivery services will enrich our already rich corporations like UPS, and convert decent career postal jobs into frantic lowpaid delivery boys racing brown trucks around our neighborhoods. It is just another variation on the privatization of our prison system (which as a private enterprise now lobbies legislatures and Congress to imprison more people for longer periods.) And of course all across the country, these “conservatives” are trying to cut library funding, fire fighting capabilities, and other community services and infrastructure that rich people don’t need. It’s the reverse of the process of building civilization and communities that our ancestors worked so hard for.

David Atkins at Hulaballoo deconstructs what “freedom” really means to Republicans. After reading it, google “fascism”:

… when Republicans speak about “freedom” as their leaders did last night, they mean only two things: 1) the “freedom” of the super-rich to tilt the deck even farther in their favor while contributing nothing to the social supports that made them rich; and 2) the “freedom” of religious bigots to enforce their version on morality on everyone else. When they argue that President Obama is removing their freedoms, they refer not to his actual infringements on American freedoms, but rather his innocuous efforts at universal health insurance and 1990s era tax rates on the wealthy.

American conservatives don’t care about individual liberty. They arguably never have. The care only about preserving the right of private wealth and religious authority to abuse and oppress the rest of us without interference or intervention. The federal government is the ultimate restraint, elected by the people of this country, placed on their otherwise absolute authority, and they want it gone. They want the freedom to employ anyone they choose at any wage and at any age that they wish, and then cast them aside once they’re no longer useful. They want the “freedom” to stuff women back into the kitchen, minorities back into shantytowns, and gays back into the closet. That’s “freedom” to the conservative mind.

“Freedom” for them isn’t about everyone in this country having the opportunity to live life as they see fit. It’s about making sure that the most powerful private individuals, be they CEOs or church leaders, get to make the rest of us live the lives they see fit.:

I might add “freedom” to them is for corporations to be free to degrade and pollute our living spaces and our planet, achieved by starving our government through tax cuts.

The proposed XL pipeline is a giant toxic Love Canal across America’s heartland. The Canadian corporation that wants to build it is bullying landowners in its path, threatening the use of condemnation proceedings, and the sheeple aren’t taking it lying down:

The effect of it today is to place people like Randy Thompson on an unfamiliar side of the divide between conservatives and environmentalists; and business and liberal political activists. He even testified this month against TransCanada as a witness for Henry Waxman’s minority on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“I’m a little ashamed to say that maybe if it hadn’t come across our land, I wouldn’t have gotten involved,” he told me. “I’ve gained a great deal of respect for people who do care about our environment I’ve become much more aware of environmental issues. I have to admire them for being concerned about our environment.”

“Republicans,” he said, by contrast, “could give a rats ass about the people out here.”